“This was, of course, when we were free under the Tsar. Weapons, from swords and spears to pistols, rifles and shotguns were everywhere, common items. People carried them concealed, they carried them holstered. Fighting knives were a prominent part of many traditional attires and those little tubes criss crossing on the costumes of Cossacks and various Caucasian peoples? Well, those are bullet holders for rifles.”

However, the communists weren’t stupid, he wrote, and when they took power, “One of the first things they did was to disarm the population. ”

“From that point, mass repression, mass arrests, mass deportations, mass murder, mass starvation were all a safe game for the powers,” Mishin wrote.

The commentary, which originally appeared on the author’s personal website, comes just as the gun control sentiment in America is at a zenith because of the deranged attack on a Newtown, Conn., school in which 20 children and six adults were killed.

As WND reported, a coalition of gun organizations already has told members of Congress that more restrictions on guns won’t increase security and will likely, instead, lead to more violence.

“Between the first significant school shooting, in 1966, and enactment of the 1996 (Gun Free School Zones Act], media summaries reveal eight shootings with 134 victims killed or wounded – a rate of 4.3 victims per year,” said the letter to members of Congress and other leaders.

“Members of the National Coalition to Stop the Gun Ban demand that Congress refuse to use lawful gun owners as political scapegoats and instead reduce school violence by …. Defeating any attempt to pass gun control including, but not limited to, banning semi-automatic firearms or magazines, or requiring private gun transfers to be registered through the National Instant Check System; and repealing the Gun Free School Zones Act of 1996.”

The letter is signed by leader of the Firearms Coalition, Gun Owners of America, Rights Watch International, Second Amendment Sisters and USRKBA.org and dozens of state groups.

The Pravda column noted that taking over lands holding “an extremely well armed and aggressive population hell bent on exterminating or driving out the aggressor” was no simple matter.

“To this day, with the Soviet Union now dead 21 years, with a whole generation born and raised to adulthood without the SU, we are still denied our basic and traditional rights to self defense. Why? We are told that everyone would just start shooting each other and crime would be everywhere …. but criminals are still armed and still murdering and [too] often, especially in the far regions, those criminals wear the uniforms of the police.”

Even today, the columnist wrote, authorities “do as they please, a tyrannical class who knows they have absolutely nothing to fear from a relatively unarmed population. This, in turn, breeds not respect but absolute contempt and often enough, criminal abuse.”

Mishin said America’s Second Amendment, the right to bear arms, “is a rare light in an ever darkening room.”

“Governments will use the excuse of trying to protect the people from maniacs and crime, but … in reality, it is the bureaucrats protecting their power and position,” he said.

“In all cases where guns are banned, gun crime continues and often increases. As for maniacs, be it nuts with cars (NYC, Chapel Hill, N.C.), swords (Japan), knives (China) or home made bombs (everywhere), insane people strike. They throw acid (Pakistan, UK), they throw fire bombs (France), they attack. What is worse, is, that the best way to stop a maniac is not psychology or jail or ‘talking to them,’ it is a bullet in the head, that is why they are a maniac, because they are incapable of living in reality or stopping themselves.”

He continued: “Do not be fooled by a belief that progressives, leftists hate guns. Oh, no, they do not. What they hate is guns in the hands of those who are not marching in lock step of their ideology. They hate guns in the hands of those who think for themselves and do not obey without question. They hate guns in those whom they have slated for a barrel to the back of the ear.

“So, do not fall for the false promises and do not extinguish the light that is left to allow humanity a measure of self respect.”

Already, state and national lawmakers in the U.S. are strategizing over more gun restrictions. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., has a plan that would ban 120 specific weapons and certain semiautomatic rifles, handguns and shotguns that have certain features. It also would impose background checks on owners and require registration of a firearm serial number and positive identification of the owner, including photograph and fingerprints.

That’s despite her own experience with the need to carry a weapon, as she explained:

It was during a U.S. Senate hearing on terrorism after the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, she told “a little anecdote” of how she carried concealed to protect herself after two assassination attempts by the New World Liberation Front, the NWLF.

She explained: “I know the sense of helplessness that people feel. I know the urge to arm yourself because that’s what I did. I was trained in firearms. I walked to the hospital when my husband was sick. I carried a concealed weapon and I made the determination if somebody was going to try and take me out, I was going to take them with me.”

She championed her private firearm ownership the same year that she called for banning “all” firearm ownership.

In an interview with “60 Minutes” in 1995 she said, “If I could have gotten 51 votes in the Senate of the United States, for an outright ban, picking up every one of them. Mr. and Mrs. America, turn ’em all in, I would have done it.”

The FBI says the number of background checks for Americans buying guns set a record in December. The 2.8 million background checks recorded last month surpassed November’s record of 2 million. December 2011 saw 1.9 million checks. In Colorado, there was a backlog of tens of thousands of gun owners waiting to pick up weapons they had purchased. State agency officials asked for an extra $500,000 to make sure the work, which was running with about a 10-day delay, got done.